How Do You Use Effective Communication and Consultation Techniques

When you are starting a new project you will need to be able to use all of your communication and consultation techniques to get it done. You may not have to use them all, but you should be ready to. The easiest thing you can do at this stage is to set up a plan for how the project is going to go ahead and what things you will need to do as a manager in order to proceed as the project moves forward. The more complicated the project is the more in depth the plan needs to become, and the more people need to see the plan. If it becomes very complicated your team may all want to work on plans for each of their parts in the project so that everyone knows what needs to happen. These will change as problems come up in the project, but that is one of the roles of communication.

As the project is being planned it may become obvious that you will need to consult with someone outside of the team to let them know what is happening and how it is going to happen. When you do this you should identify for them the scope of your project, how it will affect them, anything they may need to do or provide you with in order for you to continue, set out the appropriate methods for this to occur with an option for feedback from both sides on how this is working out. This kind of consultations usually happens in the workplace where there is a sensitive project and a share holder, or a client will need to be notified and kept up to date on the progress of the project.

When problems occur, because there are few projects that can go off without a hitch here or there, the most important thing is to let the appropriate people be aware of what changes are being made without sounding like it is a question or a decision you can change. Stay cool, calm, and answer any questions they may have. If you have a hard time having these kinds of conversations, look for someone on your team with customer service training who can help with the discussion. Allow them to give you feedback as part of the discussion and you may decide to change something based on ideas that are presented to you.